My dad recently remembered that he never bought me a graduation present, so we decided to go out and look at some laptops. We looked over some laptops at Staples, HHGreg, and a while back at MicroCenter, and I'm pretty sure I know what I want, but I would like some tips on what to look for, what price range I should expect, and where, if possible, I could get something cheaper.

My dad told me it that it was going to have to be around $500, but he said he'd be a bit lenient with that, so with some convincing, and maybe throwing in a bit of my own money, I could get a laptop as much as $600, so that's my budget.

I don't care much about screen size, or webcams, but I do know that I don't want a netbook, so a screen-size of about 15"-17" would be ideal for me. I know I want the battery to last at least 5 hours between charges (also I remember you guys talking about maintaining your batteries after using them so much, and it just seemed way over my head, so if you could explain that as well, it would be greatly appreciated) so to a point, a smaller screen would be better for me.

As far as specs go, I've been lenient, as I'm sure I could get my brother to help me upgrade it for cheaper than buying a laptop with really good specs, unopened. However, I know I want it to perform well, so I would want a decent CPU. A dual core @ 2.4 GHz or so is fine for me, as that would be a bit better than the processor on my desktop, but let me know what you think. Also, I am a gamer at heart, and I know I'm going to want a good graphics card on it as well. Some of the ones I saw on display showed ATI Radeons, usually a 4200 series or around there, but I may upgrade that to a later model as well. And lastly, the hard-drive. I think I could settle for a 320 GB HDD, but I'd really rather a 500 GB, as I like to have a lot of videos and games and the such.

Please let me know what prices you might expect what I've explained my ideal laptop would be like, and if I am or am not being to picky about this. I wasn't sure what to say about this, or what to expect, so I wanted to include any and all information I had, and my preferences. All help and advice would be greatly appreciated!

Your ideal laptop really doesn't exist, and the closest you'll get will run you $1500 or so.

You need to decide first and foremost if you want long battery life, or higher specs. 5+ hours of battery life for $500 is really pushing it. Heck, there aren't many 15"-17" laptops that do 5+ hours in the first place. In the 13" range you can find some, though, but not for $500 (my Asus with it's 13" screen and $800 price tag gets 8-9 hours of actual usage - I love it). Also, you really can't upgrade laptops. You can increase RAM and swap out the hard drive, but that's about it.

Likewise, a laptop with a good graphics card will also run $1,000+, at least. An ATI 4200 (or equivalent Nvidia x10/x20) is not a good graphics card. It can handle movies, and really old games, and that's about it.

So truly honestly what do you intend to do with this laptop? For $500-600 you can more or less forget about gaming on it, so since it won't be gaming what is the most demanding thing you need it to do?

Unfortunate to hear, but I guess that's life for ya.

Glad to hear now rather than later that the only upgrades I really could do are RAM and HDD. It's supposed to be for college, and I plan on getting a degree in Robotics Engineering, so I guess the most demanding thing I can imagine I'd ever need to do on it may be AutoCAD.

Mostly what I do on my comp. currently is watch videos and listen to music (and of course surf the web). I enjoy having games, but if it means saving $1000, I can live with C&C:RA2, Doom, and other less significantly intensive games.

So another question: do you think it would be cheaper to get a computer with less HDD space, then upgrade that myself?

I think it would not be a good idea to discard a laptop idea that is otherwise a good fit because its HDD size is insufficient, but I don't think you should specifically look for a laptop with a small HDD with swapping it out in mind. I think the savings would be negligible.

My laptop was $500 about 5 years ago, and at that time, it got me a really nice gaming computer (imo). It had a 160 gb hard drive, 2 gb of ram (non-upgradeable), and Windows Vista. When I switched to 7, I was able to run most, if not all, games that I could play previously. I am able to run UT at a favorable (the smallest) size and get really good speed on most maps. Most FPS I play run pretty quickly on all but the most complicated parts. Basically, you can get a good computer for cheap and still be able to play games on it. Oh yeah, and Portal ran with a hair of lag, but that is it. (I bet you someone will come by and contradict everything I just said, watch.)

That doesn't tell me much; what's your processor and video capabilities? Integrated or discrete? What manufacturer? At the risk of sounding like Kllrnohj, almost everything can run UT, including my poor little Centrino tablet with 512MB of RAM and 64MB integrated graphics from six years ago.

@The Muffin Man
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Well, my dual processor is AMD Turion, 64 bit, at 2 ghz. My monitor is an ATI Radeon X1200. The graphics card is integrated (I think). My computer is a Toshiba Satellite A215. Also, weird, I assumed that UT would be a good benchmark, meh, oh well Also, if I was wrong in answering the questions, do tell, because I didn't quite understand most of it

Your integrated graphics is the ATI Radeon X1200, actually.

AutoCAD is pretty intense. You probably aren't going to be running that on a $500 laptop, so you'll probably need to use the school's labs.

How important then is battery life and screen size? 17" laptop is *huge*. 15" is sort of a medium size, but not the most portable. 13" is the sweet spot IMO.

Just to be clear, you CAN get a decently powerful laptop for $600 that can handle some games (well, maybe more like $700), it's just that battery life is going to suck. Basically you need to prioritize what features you want. You gave a huge list of stuff you want, now rank their importance. Don't forget things like portability and weight.



No, but hdd space is largely irrelevant. If you run out, just get a USB powered external drive. Most laptops come with 500gb drives nowadays anyway.

I've seen laptops that will run AutoCAD pretty well for $700ish but that same laptop has been sent back to HP for repairs at least twice in under a year so you can guess on its build quality.

Anything larger than 16" shouldn't really be called portable in any sense but even my Dell Studio XPS 1610 is pretty good there, and the extended batter can get be up to 4hrs if I crank the power saving settings, that's including a HD4670 mobile card so it has plenty of power.



No, but hdd space is largely irrelevant. If you run out, just get a USB powered external drive.[/quote]If you really want the larger drive it is cheaper to just have it installed at the factory but a faster driver or even a hybrid one would be a larger factor to me than size for a laptop since you'll want any performance you can get out of it even if it means shorter HDD life in the long run.

Battery life isn't terribly important, but I would like it to be able to last quite a while, so 5-6 hours would be nice, and 8-9 hours as you were saying on your 13" would be great, even though I probably wouldn't need it to last that long. And as far as screen-size goes, I think I'd be able to live with a 13", but I'd rather a slightly larger sized one.

Any suggestions on what to look for for CPU (speed and dual core vs. i3), RAM, and whether to look for an Intel GPU or an ATI Radeon?

Also, I remember seeing a fingerprint scanner on some of them. Any suggestions on those? My dad told me he had a laptop that he bought 4 years ago that had one, but it had problems since if you had much anything on your finger, or a cut on it, or anything at all, it would probably misread your finger. Do you know if they've generally improved upon that technology yet?

How might I contact the factory to get an estimate on how much a laptop custom built there would cost?

I meant if you were buying it from HP, Dell or similar they let you customize it before you buy.

As someone who has gone through the agony of developing even a rudimentary fingerprint recognizer, I take issue with that statement. The technology is highly evolved, and can be set to be more or less forgiving to something like a cut on your finger. However, regardless of the detector's ability to understand cuts, there's a good reason why you register more than one finger, plus at least for Windows' fingerprint login, which I use on my current Tablet PC, you always have the option of just typing your password. The fingerprint scanner is a time-saving convenience.